Introspective psychophysics for the study of subjective experience.
Cerebral Cortex January 8, 2025 DOI: 10.1093/cercor/bhae455 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Philosophy of mind |
| Keywords | Consciousness Emotion Memory Metacognition Perception Psychophysics Subjective experience |
| Citations | 10 |
| Key points | Argues that introspection's apparent faults do not prevent building a meaningful psychophysical research program that treats subjective experience as a valid empirical target. |
Abstract
Studying subjective experience is hard. We believe that pain is not identical to nociception, nor pleasure a computational reward signal, nor fear the activation of "threat circuitry". Unfortunately, introspective self-reports offer our best bet for accessing subjective experience, but many still believe that introspection is "unreliable" and "unverifiable". But which of introspection's faults do we find most damning? Is it that introspection provides imperfect access to brain processes (e.g. perception, memory)? That subjective experience is not objectively verifiable? That it is hard to isolate from non-subjective processing capacity? Here, I argue none of these prevents us from building a meaningful, impactful psychophysical research program that treats subjective experience as a valid empirical target through precisely characterizing relationships among environmental variables, brain processes and behavior, and self-reported phenomenology. Following recent similar calls by Peters (Towards characterizing the canonical computations generating phenomenal experience. 2022. Neurosci Biobehav Rev: 142, 104903), Kammerer and Frankish (What forms could introspective systems take? A research programme. 2023. J Conscious Stud 30:13-48), and Fleming (Metacognitive psychophysics in humans, animals, and AI. 2023. J Conscious Stud 30:113-128), "introspective psychophysics" thus treats introspection's apparent faults as features, not bugs-just as the noise and distortions linking environment to behavior inspired Fechner's psychophysics over 150 years ago. This next generation of psychophysics will establish a powerful tool for building and testing precise explanatory models of phenomenology across many dimensions-urgency, emotion, clarity, vividness, confidence, and more.
Comparable studies
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| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: a framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. | 2003 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| From dopamine to salience to psychosis--linking biology, pharmacology and phenomenology of psychosis. | 2005 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| How do the brain's time and space mediate consciousness and its different dimensions? Temporo-spatial theory of consciousness (TTC). | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| The phenomenology of deep brain stimulation-induced changes in OCD: an enactive affordance-based model. | 2013 | Theoretical or philosophical paper | |
| Looking for the Self: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology and Philosophical Significance of Drug-induced Ego Dissolution | 2017 | Theoretical or philosophical paper |
Citations in the library
Cited by 4
- Metacognitive Feelings of Epistemic Gain are Central to the Understanding of Psychedelic-Induced Mystical-Type Experiences Cognitive Therapy and Research March 29, 2025
- Beyond accommodation: on the structural turn in computational functionalist theories of consciousness. Neuroscience of Consciousness 2025
- Reappraising intuitions about consciousness. Frontiers in Psychology March 20, 2026
- Towards an integrative neuroscience of metacognition. Nature Reviews Neuroscience September 16, 2026
Cites 17
- Quality space computations for consciousness Trends in Cognitive Sciences July 17, 2024
- Confidence ratings do not distinguish imagination from reality. Journal of Vision May 1, 2024
- Identifying content-invariant neural signatures of perceptual vividness. PNAS Nexus February 1, 2024
- Metacognition as a window into subjective affective experience Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences June 17, 2024
- Tests for consciousness in humans and beyond. Trends in Cognitive Sciences March 1, 2024
and 12 more in the library